Perfectly Cut Screams

“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” filled the airwaves in my tiny car as we cruised  together down the highway. We called it the Highway of Love because we had driven down this same highway many times over the past year. We didn’t have a destination, we just drove listening to the radio and singing along to the music. The breeze from the sunroof would whip though our hair and we didn’t care how messy our hair was all we cared about was enjoying that moment in time. 

It seemed like time was slow and easy back then. We were just two teenagers who wanted to enjoy life, sing to top ten pop songs on the radio, eat fries until we were too full to move, drive on the highway just to get out of the house on a Friday night and Sunday afternoon and most importantly just to hang out together and laugh until our stomachs hurt and our faces hurt from smiling. We were the best of friends.  

After high school we moved together to a small apartment. It was the only apartment in the city that we could afford. One bedroom, two best friends. Two best friends with little money and no furniture. We had countless picnics on the living room floor eating mac and cheese and peanut butter sandwiches. We talked about everything and anything and when we finally saved up enough to buy a sofa we did what any smart young adults would do. We found an old purple velvet sofa with a tiny hole in the middle cushion sitting on the curb in front of a house with a for sale sign on the lawn. We carried that sofa five blocks to our apartment and pivoted a bunch of times left and right then right again before we got it through the front door. By the time we got it in the house both of us were too tired to argue about where to put it. So, we just sat it down by the ivory white wall across from the one picture window in the apartment. It stayed there for years. 

The cliche, I love you to the moon and back was so real to us. I know I definitely loved you to the moon, stars and the planet Mars and back. This was the real thing and we both knew it.

We spent hours just chatting about nothing and watching TV shows about nothing on the weekends and at night my hand would get lost in yours. 

“Will you marry me?” Brice asked his rain soaked best friend, Misty.

Misty instantly gave Brice the “Are you crazy look?” A look where she would squint her eyes and then roll her eyeballs as far back as they could go in her head. She would wrinkle her nose and shake her head, all a part of the look. Not only was she standing there in the pouring rain without any umbrella and she knew she looked totally unattractive with her long red hair dripping from the water and Brice had the nerve to pick this moment in time to ask her the one question she had been waiting for him to ask since the day she met him. This is not how she imagined this would happen. She thought he would take her on a romantic getaway where it was not raining and she was not soaked and wet and looking like a wet hen to ask her the most romantic question in the world. But, yet, here they were standing in front of a movie theater soaking wet and Brice on one knee his hair dripping, his clothes wet while the rain was pouring with a ring in his hand on one knee. 

“Misty, did you hear me?” Brice asked.

Misty nodded yes.

“Yes you heard me or yes you will marry me? What does that nod mean?” Brice asked.

“Yes, yes, I will marry you.” Misty screamed and wrapped her wet and soggy hands around her best friend’s neck and kissed him.

Misty planned the wedding for a year. She walked down the aisle in a long white gown which her grandmother wore decades before her. Misty’s long red hair was curled and piled high on her head with dangling curls framing her face. She felt like the walk down the aisle was the longest walk of her life. Brice was standing at the end of her walk and he looked so handsome she almost started crying right then and there. 

Five years ticked off the clock and then it happened. Misty’s grandmother had called and told her, “A storm was coming.” Misty glanced out of the window as the clouds darkened in the skies above and she braced herself for the storm ahead. Misty didn’t know yet that there was another storm brewing. A storm that she would never see coming. This storm would not only bring her rain but it would bring her pain, anger, fear, hate, and leave a taste so foul in her mouth one that she would never taste it again. After today she would trust no one for decades and she would always have questions about herself. The question of Why would always be in the back of her brain. A question that she would never know the answer to.

Misty was standing in the kitchen chopping up some veggies for dinner. She really hated veggies but she had to eat them now. She couldn’t take any chances with her health now. 

She tossed the chopped carrots in the boiling pot of water with the potatoes and steak she had cut up earlier. She hoped this stew would taste as good as her mom used to make as she sprinkled a little more salt in the pot and closed the lid. She put on the tea kettle and grabbed her favorite mug. Rainey days always made her crave tea. 

She turned around when she heard the sounds of the key opening the lock on the front door. Brice walked in and threw his jacket on the sofa as he always did many times in the past but then he did something he never did before. He sat down and he didn’t even kiss Misty hello. He told her the words that everyone dreads to hear. She knew that the words only meant something was wrong and she didn’t want to hear wrong right now. She wanted to just enjoy her tea and talk about her day as they always did. But, she looked at the frown on his face and the light had gone out of his brown eyes and she knew that she had to hear it. 

“Misty, we have to talk.” 

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

“I think you need to sit down.” Brice motioned for her to sit in the chair across from the couch. Misty hated sitting in that chair. It was an old dark brown recliner chair which her dad had given them for a wedding gift.  She slowly walked to the chair and eased herself down.

“Misty. I have something to tell you.”

“Go ahead and tell me. Just say it Brice.” Misty demanded.

“I don’t know exactly how to say this.” Brice said looking down at the floor.

Misty grabbed her growing belly and rubbed it to soothe herself and her baby inside of her.

“Misty, everything you know about me is a lie.” Brice continued 

“What are you talking about?”

Misty asked the question but she already knew the answer. The answer came a few months back when she was going through some papers and she found something that shocked her. She didn’t believe what she was reading at first but it was all there in black and white. Brice had several passports under several different names. She knew that something was wrong but she didn’t say a word. She went on about her day like she had seen nothing and read nothing. A few days later while she was in the garage doing laundry she found a shoe box in the back of the garage on a shelf that she never used. She opened the box and found a bill to a storage locker across town. Misty grabbed her keys and drove to the storage locker and convinced the manager that it was hers and she had lost her keys. She didn’t think that lie would work but it worked in her favor that the manager was a kid no older than 22 who was constantly on his phone texting and barely looked up when she told him that lie and he just handed her an extra key to locker 229. Misty opened the locker which was filled with all types of weapons and more passports and more papers.  She went through each of the passports and papers and walked out. Leaving everything as she found them. She knew that this man she married and was in love with was a total and complete stranger to her now. It was soul shaking.

“I already know.” Misty continued.

“What do you know?”

“Brice, I said I already know but actually I don’t know. I don’t know who you are and I don’t think I ever did. I went to the locker. I saw everything. I saw the passports. I saw the weapons. I saw it all. I read the papers. Who are you?”

“I’m sorry.” Brice mumbled.

“Don’t be sorry. Just tell me the truth. I want to know the truth about all the out of town business trips about all the stuff in the locker. Just tell me the freaking truth Brice. Can you do that?” Misty demanded.

“Misty, I work for an International company. I can’t tell you anything about it but basically I am a special agent. I work for the people who have no voice. I help those people. I travel all over the world and need to have multiple passports so my identity won’t be known. But, now Misty, my love, I must leave. I don’t know when or if I will be back. I may be back in a month or a year but I have to leave tonight.” Brice explained.

“You gotta be kidding me. Brice, I am 5 months pregnant with your baby!! What the hell am I supposed to do? I wasn’t supposed to be a single parent. And what am I supposed to do while you are on whatever assignment in whatever part of the world? Just sit here with your child after he is born and tell him what about his dad? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say to you right now? Brice, I hate you so much right now.” 

“Baby, I know this is hard to hear and even harder for me to say but I really have to go. I will try my best to come home before our baby is born. I can only try.” Brice said.

“Brice, if that is even your real name, why did you let me fall in love with you? Why? All I want to know is why?” Misty shouted.

“Push, push.” Misty’s doctor was saying as she laid in the hospital bed four months later. 

“I can’t. It’s too hard.” Misty screamed. Her hair was wet and she was soaking wet with sweat this time instead of raindrops.

“Come on Misty just one more push.” The doctor said waiting to deliver her baby boy.

Misty pushed with all of the strength she had left in her body and a few seconds later her son was born. Misty cried with tears of joy when they placed her newborn son in her arms.  Hours later she woke up from a sleep to the cries of her son. She reached over to the bassinet where her baby was only to see someone else standing there over her baby. Misty panicked. She reached for the button to call the nurse. She pressed it over and over again. The nurse came running into Misty’s room and Misty looked up at the figure standing over her son and she told the nurse, “Nurse, please call security and escort this stranger out of my room please.”

“Sir, you have to go.” The nurse said as the man followed behind.